People Don't Change Easily
by Zombie Raptor
Summary: Naruto and Ino are friends with benefits. Ino realizes that something is wrong with Naruto and is determined to find out. Rated M for slight sexual situation. Mostly glossed over.
1. Chapter 1

Ino sighed happily as she waved goodbye, leaving Naruto's apartment. It was ten at night and she was heading back home. After she exited the building, she frowned. There was something wrong with Naruto. They weren't dating, but they had been sleeping together for the last few weeks. Regardless she was his friend and she was worried about him.

She needed to talk to someone about it. She had, in a roundabout way, asked Naruto what was wrong, but he gave no indication of what was wrong. He just acted cold, and sidestepped the question. She found it odd since whenever they talked, such as on missions, he was the same idiotic, fun loving guy that he had always been.

As she thought about it, she wondered who she could ask. She thought about Sakura, but she doubted Sakura could really guess what was wrong with him. Ino knew that Sakura and her were alike for a long time, so Sakura probably wouldn't know those deep rooted troubles that Naruto had.

Tsunade hadn't been around long enough. She might know, so Ino filed that thought away if she ran out of options.

The third Hokage and Jiraiya were both dead, which obviously counted both of them out. As she thought of Jiraiya she remembered Kakashi used to be Naruto's teacher. Ino promised herself that first thing in the morning she would find Kakashi and ask him.

She might not be dating Naruto, but Ino knew that she cared for him.

sssss

It was morning and Ino went looking for Kakashi. She figured she'd probably ask Tsunade first, then ask her if she knew where Kakashi would be. It would be pointless to look for Kakashi if he was out of a mission. She knew Tsunade had marked Naruto as next in line for Hokage. He had more than proved himself over that last several years.

After a few minutes, Ino found herself at Tsunade's door. Ino knocked.

"Come in." Tsunade said.

Once Ino walked in, Tsunade looked up, slightly surprised to see her. "Ino, what is it you need?"

"Well, I think there's something wrong with Naruto. I figured I'd ask you before I asked Kakashi."

Tsunade looked concerned. Naruto had become dear to her. She thought of him as a son or a grandson. "What is it?"

"Well, I, we um," Ino paused. Neither her or Naruto had told anybody that they were sleeping together. It had just happened when they were on a mission. They were drinking, and Naruto was warm and passionate, and it had just happened.

"We started sleeping together a few weeks ago." Ino said quickly. Tsunade was surprised to say the least. "Anyways, I tried asking him about it once, but he just ignored me. We aren't dating so I didn't want to force it, but I'm worried."

Tsunade sighed. She honestly didn't know what was wrong. She wished she knew more about Naruto, but she hadn't been around for a long time, something she personally viewed as a large failure in her life. She knew Jiraiya had felt the same way when he was alive.

"Kakashi should be here quite soon. I was about to put him on a mission I'll have him sent over once I brief him for the mission."

"If it's okay, I'd rather just wait for him here."

Tsunade nodded. "Ino. You said you two aren't dating." Tsunade commented, and Ino nodded. "Why not? You seem to care a great deal for him."

Ino was taken aback by the question. She hadn't been expecting something like that. "I don't know. We just aren't. I mean..." Ino tailed off. She couldn't give a real reason.

Tsunade smiled. "Why don't you. I may be a bit biased, but I doubt you can find a more compassionate and caring person than Naruto. And you should be able to get him to open up more."

Ino smiled and nodded.

Both Ino and Tsunade looked at the door as it opened.

"Am I interrupting?" Kakashi asked.

"Not at all. In fact, Ino here needed to ask you something."

"I'm worried about Naruto. He's been acting kind of cold whenever I'm at his place. He's fine if I meet him anywhere else, but..."

"You two are dating?" Kakashi asked.

"Friends with benefits." Tsunade replied.

"My best guess. It probably has to do with his childhood. I would talk to Iruka. He was the one person that knew Naruto the best back then."

"Thanks." Ino said, rushing out of the office.

Kakashi tilted his head. "Why isn't she dating him?"

Tsunade chuckled. "I asked the same thing. I think she's going to ask him out afterwards."

Kakashi shrugged. "I hope she figures it out. Anyways, about the mission."

sssss

Ino stood outside Iruka's class waiting for a moment when she could talk to him. When the class went on break, Ino stepped in.

"Ino, it's nice to see you. What do you need?" Iruka asked.

"I'm worried about Naruto, and Kakashi said I should ask you."

Iruka nodded and Ino explained the situation to him. Iruka sighed as he thought about it.

"I think I understand, and you seem to care for him, so why aren't you going out with him?"

Ino groaned. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't know why I'm not, but I'll get around to it after I figure out what's going on with him."

"I wanted to make sure. I'm guessing that this is left over from Naruto's childhood."

Ino tilted her head "What do you mean?" It seemed like Kakashi's guess had been correct.

"Naruto was alone for the much of his life. Everyone pushed him away and he was lonely. The third Hokage told me once that people don't change easily. He was referring to the villagers, but this also applies to Naruto. If I had to take a guess, there's a hole in Naruto's heart that even with the respect of the villagers, hasn't been filled. In his heart he still feels lonely and I believe when you and him started sleeping together, it brought that to the surface. I think you just have to be there for him. Because you are not dating, he may feel as if you don't truly care for him, and it reminds him of his childhood when no one did."

"S-so, it's my fault?" Ino asked, her eyes starting to water.

Iruka didn't respond immediately, choosing his words carefully. "You are the one that brought these feelings out in him, however they were already there. If you truly do care about him, you can be the one to heal him as well."

"You said it was the loneliness in his childhood that caused this, so if I'm there for him, it should help right?"

"I believe so. Just take good care of him. He was always one to try and keep his feelings to himself. It might not seem that way, but he was always sad as a child, and pain like that doesn't just go away. The Third Hokage definitely knew what he was talking about. Naruto was always thinking about the family he never had. He probably still is." Iruka said with a smile.

Ino nodded. She remembered Naruto as a prankster when they were little. He always seemed to be laughing. but knowing what she did now, it made sense now that Iruka said it. It was a cover for his loneliness. He was an orphan who was alone and hurting inside, and they had all pushed him away.

Ino smiled. Naruto wasn't going to be alone for a long time. She was going back to Tsunade's office to explain what she had planned. She wouldn't leave Naruto's side.


	2. Chapter 2

Ino wore a small smile. She had waited till night when she knew Naruto would be home. She wanted to go about this as delicately as possible. Ino giggled a bit. There wasn't going to be anything delicate about what was going to happen tonight.

Ino knocked and waited. After a few moments Naruto opened the door, and look surprised to see Ino. Without saying anything, Naruto pulled Ino into his apartment. Pushing Ino against a wall, Naruto forcefully pressed his lips against hers.

This was generally how it was. They didn't talk when one of them visited, they just fucked. When they met outside either of their apartments, nothing that happened between them was mentioned. No one else knew, and it was their own little secret that they didn't talk about.

Naruto slid down Ino's body, pulling her pants on the way. As he started to rise, he lifted Ino's shirt, laying kisses on her stomach up to her neck. Ino squealed as Naruto picked her up and tossed her across the room onto his bed. Ino didn't particularly mind. Naruto always took control and did whatever he wanted, though they had broken a few beds. She had learned that if he was going to throw her on that bed like that she needed a sturdier bed. As she heard a crack, she assumed Naruto hadn't learned that lesson.

A little while later, things had calmed down. They had ended up on the floor, the legs of the bed had broke after having been weakened by her being thrown on it.

Looking up at Naruto, Ino smiled "That was amazing, but I think we need to fix the bed now."

Naruto froze. That was the first time either of them had spoken anything but grunts and calling each others name.

Ino smiled and wrapped her arms around Naruto's neck to pull herself up. "Come on, we can pull the mattress off for now and sleep on it."

Naruto pulled out of Ino, causing her to moan at the loss. All she wanted to do now was go to sleep and cuddle with Naruto, but she wanted to get Naruto to say something, or at least start the process of him opening up.

Pulling the mattress off the bed, Ino pulled Naruto down onto it. "Come on, let's get some rest."

Naruto wasn't sure what to do. For the longest time his small apartment had been his haven. He had people visit briefly, but normally people didn't spend a whole lot of time here. It was somewhere where he didn't have to hide what he was feeling. No one had ever spent the night here except for him.

He wasn't exactly sure how, but Ino was now asleep and he was holding her. This was the first time they she had ever stayed the night. He wasn't sure how to act. He had never been in this position before.

With nothing else to do, Naruto laid there until he fell asleep.

sssss

Naruto woke up to find himself alone in bed. Ino was gone. He felt something pull at his heart, but he strangely felt more comfortable.

Ino smiled as she walked into Naruto's apartment. "Oh hey Naruto. Didn't expect you to be awake yet. I just went out to get us breakfast. Your favorite." she said holding up Ichiraku's takeout.

Naruto smiled nervously. He didn't know why he felt this way. He should feel completely happy. He liked Ino, probably even loved her, and ramen was indeed his favorite. However, at the moment his feelings were mixed. He didn't know how to feel. While he liked her, there were still doubts.

Putting the food down on the table, Ino moved towards Naruto and leaned down, giving him a peck on the lips. "Come on, let's eat breakfast then fix the bed. I heard Tsunade has a mission for us today as well."

Naruto nodded dumbly, doing as Ino said. They ate with Ino talking between bites, and Naruto just listening.

"Anyways Naruto, I wanted to ask. Do you mind if I bring some of my stuff over. I'm thinking I might spend more nights here."

Naruto froze again. He didn't know what to say. He had started to like Ino. They had been hanging out more and been going on missions together more often since Tsunade had taken over as Hokage again. Ino was amazing at getting information. She had learned quite a bit on how to get information from an unwilling target from her father. She also learned how to get information from a willing target who was dying. She didn't have the heart for physical interrogation, but she didn't need it. She was also an invaluable asset to the village. She could heal both the body and mind, she could interrogate enemies quite well, and she could hold her own in a fight.

This all meant, of course, that she needed to be protected. Naruto was generally the one assigned to help Ino. He was a powerhouse, and had proved that he could fight with the best of the best. He had continued training harder than ever, and he could keep up with A even when he wasn't in his nine tails chakra cloak. Naruto had by all accounts become an absolute monster.

Tsunade and Kakashi had offered to give the Hokage position to Naruto, but he had declined. Their leadership would be better than his in the recovery, and his strength would be more useful than his leadership for the time being.

"Naruto, are you going to answer?" Ino asked.

"Yeah, um, well, I don't know..." he tailed off. He sounded the least confident that he had ever sounded.

"How about this. If you need your safe place, how 'bout you move in with me. You keep this place, but live at my apartment. If you ever need your space, then you can come back here."

Naruto nodded. "Ok." He said uneasily.

"Come on, we'll pack up some of your clothes, and any food that might go bad and head over to my place."

As they walked to Ino's apartment, Ino glanced over at Naruto.

"You know, I'm not going to give up until you talk."

Naruto nodded. He had already loosened up. Last time she asked, he had shut her out completely.

"Come on, just throw me a bone here. I know I might not have always liked you, but I do care for you now. We were both idiots back then."

Naruto sighed. "I'm not sure if you'll understand, but fine. I always thought that gaining the respect of everyone would make me happy, and with some people it does. People like Gaara make me happy. The people in this village, they treated me like shit. The only times I wasn't ignored was when they hit me. Now they act like it never happened. They don't like me, they like the image of who I've become. The person who saved the leaf. They don't even see me as the same person as the kid I was. I might as well be a newcomer to the village, not someone who has loved here their entire life."

Ino understood what he meant, but knew she could never understand how he felt, unless she used one of her clan's jutsus, which she would never use on Naruto without his permission.

"Naruto, whether they acknowledge it or not, you are the same boy I thought was annoying when we were growing up. We've both matured since then, but I know at your core, you still are the same boy. All the same loves you had, the regrets, the fears, and the hate. It's who you are and all I can do is ask you to share that burden. I won't force you, but if you're ever ready I want you to tell me."

Naruto glanced at Ino. He understood what she meant, and she seemed to genuinely care, and he knew how much she was willing to do when she said she would share his pain. As a Yamanaka, she could do literally that. She could feel his pain as her own, but she had told him it was his choice, and he wasn't sure if he was ready for that yet.

"Ino, why didn't you like me before?"

"I was a kid and no one liked you. The only person that did was Hinata, but she never said anything. You were the odd one out and no one wanted to join you there. We were all brats back then, the only legitimate reason I had to not like you was cause you would skip class and we'd all have to pay for it when Iruka caught you. I'm not trying to make an excuse, but we all learned from our environment. All of the villagers hated you, and all of us just kind of learned from them. By the time we were old enough to start forming our own opinions, none of us wanted to be an outcast like you, so we stayed away. Whatever you did to get attention only made it worse. The only reason any of us really got along with you after the academy was because we were forced to due to the groups. It all just fell into place after that. You weren't as bad as any of us thought, though you could still be annoying as hell, and you liked ramen way to much, and no offense, but that jumpsuit you had was terrible. Okay, definitely some offense meant there."

Naruto nodded slowly. He liked the response. She wasn't blaming just herself and the others. He knew he had continued to distance himself when he tried to get attention, and he was glad that she wasn't just trying to make it sound like it was all their fault. If he did, he didn't think he could see her as being truly sincere.

"I'll let you inside my head on one condition. Let me feel what you felt. If I find you are being completely sincere, then I'll let you do whatever you want with me."

Ino nodded. She understood Naruto had trust issues. She knew the best way to help him was to be honest. She had been fairly certain that if she had lied he would have lost faith in her. If he lost faith in her after opening up like this, she doubted he would talk to her at all.

After a few more minutes of walking, they arrived at Ino's apartment. Walking inside he set the boxes down. "How does it work?"

Ino moved him over to the couch. Pressing her forehead to his she made several hand signs. She knew he would experience things that she didn't remember herself, and she was slightly afraid that even though she had told the truth, he would still leave her.

Naruto felt himself enter her mind. As he was pulled through, he found that she was being honest. Other people were the ones that influenced her and their classmates. He also found as they grew older that the blind dislike became annoyance as he would pull pranks on her or mess around in class making everyone have to do more work. Her own opinion had formed of him. He was annoying and a troublemaker, but he wasn't that bad. She had seen the way adults looked at him, and she didn't want to be seen with him because of it. As she grew older and they graduated, the annoyance was starting to be replaced with guilt. She had started to see the true nature of who he was. He hadn't been her favorite person, but she didn't dislike him anymore. During the chūnin exams she had actually been rooting for him, though she didn't outright say it. Naruto saw the rest of her life as well. As example, she liked Sasuke, but it was a teenage crush. He came from a large respected clan, he was talented, and he had money. Even she had realized that his personality was shit though. At that age it didn't matter to her all that much.

As the years went by Naruto found that she had actually grown to like him, even if she didn't say it. Those feelings had grown to love just a few weeks ago, and what he found next surprised him. She was genuinely afraid of losing him. As that thought entered his head, he felt himself leaving her mind.

Ino looked up at Naruto. "So?"

A few tears came to his eyes, and he nodded. There wasn't anything scarring to her that happened, but his perceptions had been changed. Even one of the people who liked him the least had grown to genuinely like him before he had truly made anything of himself. She had grown to love him because of the way he treated her and his personality. His antics became less annoying and more endearing. He realized that she had slowly, but surely fallen for him. It wasn't overnight, it wasn't even over the last couple years, but it had been over a majority of their lives.

Ino looked at Naruto one last time making sure it was alright. "You're sure you want to do this Ino?"

Ino nodded. With his approval she performed the jutsu again. Naruto hadn't been sure how long he had been in her head, but he realized it had been at least a half hour. He didn't have any awareness of what she was seeing.

Ino pulled her head back sobbing. Naruto pulled her into a hug. He had felt things that she had felt that made him want to cry, but he was used to holding it in.

Picking her up, Naruto carried her to the bedroom and tried to set her down on the bed. She wouldn't let go of him.

Turning around, he sat on the bed and lifted his legs up onto the bed and rolled so Ino was in the center of her bed. Pulling his shirt off, he pulled the covers of both of them Naruto held her there for around an hour before they both drifted asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been two months since their experience inside each other's heads, and Naruto had learned to let go of some of his pain. He knew that his classmates were true friends of his.

Ino on the other hand had become fiercely protective of Naruto. She didn't understand how he had held all of his emotions in all the time. Naruto was emotional, which made it even harder for her, even having been in his head, to understand how he had held it all it in. She had cried for two days, her heart aching painfully from the experience of being in his head.

Now she hadn't left his side for more than a minute. She occasionally threw glares at different villagers, and on more than one occasion, Naruto had to physically stop her from attacking some of them.

Nuzzling her neck, Naruto smiled. "What's important is that we are a part of each other now."

Ino nodded as she relaxed a bit. She knew Naruto had realized that the jutsu she had used was not something to be used lightly. It affected the person, ingraining part of other other person into the user. On Naruto's part, he cared for Ino and had to know if it was real. The thoughts would have plagued him for the rest of his life. He wholeheartedly trusted her now.

Ino had already given into her love for Naruto and was more than willing to have part of him ingrained in her for the rest of her life.

Unfortunately for everyone in the village, one way Naruto had dealt with all his emotions that Ino had now felt as well were pranks.

It was now how Ino dealt with the turmoil in her heart. The fact that Naruto could repress all of his emotions like that was, first of all not healthy, as he clearly showed a few months ago, but also impressive. It had taken her a few weeks to stop breaking down in tears when one of the triggers he had in his head went off in hers. Like when they passed an alley that he had been lying in, bleeding when he was five. The only reason he hadn't died was the fox inside of him. It was odd thinking about it. He would have died of the fox hadn't been inside of him, but if the fox hadn't been inside of him it wouldn't have happened.

The waves of emotion were controllable now and she was happily dating Naruto Uzumaki. Everyone was happy now. Tsunade, Kakashi, and Iruka were all happy for Naruto, and Naruto and Ino were happily a couple.

Ino sighed as she thought of it. She wanted to marry him. She had decided three weeks ago that it was final. She would marry him. She wanted it and she would make it happen.

"Ow!" Ino yelped as she felt something hit her on the head.

Naruto looked down and picked up what had hit her. Looking up, he saw a woman in a window. She hadn't meant to hit Ino.

"Ino, I'll be right back."

Heading up to the room he saw the woman in, he knocked on the door.

"Excuse me miss, but are you sure you don't want this?" he asked holding the object up.

The woman sighed "Yeah, the guy was an asshole and gave one to four other woman as well. It's real, and I guess you can keep it for free. Was my own fault for throwing it out the window."

Ino came up the stairs and Naruto pocketed the object.

"It hit my girlfriend on the head. I can't thank you enough." Naruto replied, pulling out some money and giving it to the woman who gave him an odd look. He had been content, living with Ino and being her boyfriend, but this changed that.

Grabbing Ino, he ran out of the building. After reaching the top of the Hokage monument he stopped.

"Jeez Naruto, what's the rush?" Ino asked.

Falling to one knee, he held out the object. "I wouldn't have been able to wait any longer."

Tears started to fall as she nodded, unable to speak. Naruto smiled and slid the ring onto her finger.


End file.
